Friday, June 29, 2018

U.S. commanders are worried that if they had to head off a conflict with
Russia, the most powerful military in the world could get stuck in a
traffic jam.

“We have to be able to move as fast or faster than Russia in order to be
an effective deterrent,” said Ben Hodges, the U.S. Army’s former top
general in Europe.

Since retiring in December, Hodges has devoted himself to raising the
alarm from his perch at the Washington-based Center for European Policy
Analysis, and he successfully pushed to get troop-mobility issues on the
agenda of a NATO summit in Brussels next month. The United States and
NATO, Hodges said, need to be able to “mass enough capability in place
so that Russia doesn’t make a terrible miscalculation.”

Here is the link to the website of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and here is a link to the biography of Ben Hodges.

Around sixty percent of CEPA's funding comes from corporations and NGOs, 32% comes from individuals, and 8% comes from the US government.

Past donors have included: US Department of Defense, US Department of State, US Mission to NATO, US Naval Postgraduate School, NATO Public Diplomacy Division, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems, FireEye, Bell Helicopter, Textron Systems, Chevron, Cheniere, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Thursday, June 28, 2018

David Koch, one of two billionaire brothers whose
powerful conservative network transformed Republican politics, is
retiring from business and political life because of declining health,
potentially testing the staying power of an organization that was
already changing in dramatic ways.

Charles Koch
announced in a letter to employees of Koch Industries on Tuesday that
his brother’s health had deteriorated since a hospitalization last
summer. He was not specific about the illness, though his brother is a
cancer survivor. David Koch will retire from his family’s conglomerate
and step down as chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

According to an official bio, he has pledged or
contributed more than $1.3 billion to assist various causes, including
educational, arts and cultural institutions and public policy
organizations. The money has come through personal gifts and the David
H. Koch Foundation.

His representatives say he
has provided more than $300 million in additional charitable support,
beyond the $1.3 billion, for other causes — including help for victims
of Hurricane Harvey last year.

But while the
Koch name is on a lot of buildings, David Koch is best known for wading
heavily into politics. In 1980, he was the Libertarian Party’s nominee
for vice president. His ticket, with Ed Clark, received just 1 percent
of the popular vote. Ronald Reagan won.

Several
of the ideas Koch ran on that year, then seen as fringe, have
subsequently become GOP orthodoxy. And the investments that the Kochs
have made to build up think tanks, including the Cato Institute, and
promote libertarian-leaning scholars at universities are an important
part of the story of how the right moved their way.

Here is a Politico article on the think tanks tied to the Koch brothers.

Here is one of many previous Think Tank Watch posts about the Koch brothers' connection to think tanks.

Monday, June 11, 2018

Heritage Action, the sister lobbying arm of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, recently announced that Tim Chapman has become the organization's new executive director.

Here is a brief biography from Heritage:

Prior to serving as Heritage Action’s chief operating officer, Chapman
served as chief of staff to Heritage Foundation President Ed J. Feulner,
Ph.D. In this position, he advised Dr. Feulner on public policy matters
and activities of the conservative movement. He also managed Dr.
Feulner’s office staff and Heritage’s day-to-day operations. Chapman
also held multiple positions in the United States Senate.

Dan Holler, a founding staffer at Heritage Action, recently left Heritage to become Rubio's deputy chief of staff.

Dan Ziegler left Heritage Action in March to become director of the Republican Study Committee (RSC).

In other Heritage news, the chairman of the think tank's board of directors, Thomas Saunders III, announced that he will step down from his position. He will be succeeded by current vice chairman Barb Van-Andel Gaby.

Also, Heritage just opened the $15 million E.W. Richardson Building to house its interns.

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

A private platform that scores of think tankers use to earn extra cash is reportedly being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. While the platform promoted itself as an "expert network," reporting indicates that it was also involved in intelligence collection.

In the fall of 2016, Donald Trump Jr. and other key aides to the future president reportedly met in Trump Tower with Joel Zamel, the founder of a company called Wikistrat.

Wikistrat
bills itself as a “crowdsourced” geopolitical analysis firm based in
Washington, D.C. But interviews with current and former employees and
documents reviewed by The Daily Beast tell a different story: that the
vast majority of Wikistrat’s clients were foreign governments; that
Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm; and that
the company’s work was not just limited to analysis. It also engaged in
intelligence collection.

Robert Mueller’s office is investigating Wikistrat and Zamel, according to The Wall Street Journal, as the special counsel’s probe expands into Middle Eastern governments’ attempts to influence American politics.

Publicly, Wikistrat touts its crowdsourcing interface it has described as
“Wikipedia meets Facebook” to develop reports for clients. The
documents also highlight Wikistrat’s heavy reliance on
“gamification”—applying game design features to encourage user
engagement—to solicit information from sources. Former Wikistrat
employees say its founder viewed himself as the Mark Zuckerberg of the
national-security world.

But despite the firm’s purported commitment
to “transparent, open-source methodologies,” the documents provided to
The Daily Beast show something different: that the company exploits “in
country… informants” as sources.

And
according to internal Wikistrat documents marked “highly confidential
and sensitive material,” 74 percent of the firm’s revenue came from
clients that were foreign governments.

A list of "experts" that use the platform to earn extra cash (including academics and think tankers) can be found here. Wikistrat currently says that it has more than 5,000 subject-matter experts using the platform.

Monday, June 4, 2018

Here are some juicy tidbits from Reuters, in a piece entitled "The Singapore Hotel Where Top Brass, Dealers and Spies Rub Shoulders":

For the region’s military officers, diplomats, weapons manufacturers and
spies, there are few livelier places than the lobby of Singapore’s
Shangri-La hotel around mid-year.

Here, beneath pillared ceilings and chandeliers, they gather for an
annual informal bash - called the Shangri-La Dialogue - organized by the
London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Retired Western and Asian intelligence figures spend the best part of
three days loitering here; a civilian-suited Vietnamese military officer
introduces himself to a U.S. naval counterpart while a cadre of Chinese
PLA staff walk briskly past. A Laotian military representative
practices his golf swing as a gaggle of barefoot teenagers pad past from
the swimming pool, towelling themselves down and apparently oblivious
to the swirl of strategic tension.

While the IISS scholars organized a variety of panels covering regional
flashpoints and trends and diplomats arranged formal bilateral meetings
for their defense ministers, the siderooms, bars and cafes are even
busier as more discreet business is done and information traded.

Regional military attaches say the event is a legendary recruitment
spot, as officers and diplomats are tapped by business or academia -
and sometimes more shadowy enterprises. One delegate said Singapore’s
status as a leading financial hub helps.

According to rumor, operatives from various friendly Western and
Asian intelligence agencies hold a parallel gathering in another hotel,
to exchange information. That has never been verified.

As well
as the IISS, the sponsors of the Shangri-La Dialogue include major
Western defense firms, including Boeing, Airbus, BAE Systems, Lockheed
Martin and Raytheon - in part a reflection of gradually rising regional
defense budgets.

Here is a link to IISS's Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), which took place June 1-3 in Singapore. Here is a link to the agenda. Besides the ones mentioned above, other sponsors included Singapore Technologies Engineering, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the Asahi Shimbun.

Here is a bit more background of the Shangri-La Dialogue. Why is it so important? Here is a bit about how the event, which draws a huge security presence, impacts traffic.

Last year, there was quite a bit of tension after India pulled out of the SLD over an apparent snub from the organizers, precipitating the need for a team from IISS to visit India and smooth things over.

Here is a piece from The Telegraph entitled "Cambridge Spy Seminars Hit by Whispers of Russian Links as Three Intelligence Experts Resign," about the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar (CIS), an academic forum on the Western spy world.

Saturday, June 2, 2018

The Charles Koch Institute has an “associates program” that places young professionals in conservative think tanksand pays an average of $41,000 per year. The Leadership Institute, a conservative youth organization, offers interns free accommodation, free food, an $825-per-month stipend and a $200 “book allowance.”

Here is more about the 10-month Koch Associate Program, which has 90+ partner organizations, including the Acton Institute, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Heritage Foundation and Mercatus Center.

On June 26, the above-mentioned Leadership Institute is hosting the "Think Tank Opportunity Workshop." Here is more about that event, which costs $50 (or $30 if you register before June 20):

Conservative think tanks fuel new ideas, promote conservative
principles in the public policy process, and challenge and defeat the
policies of the left. They are most successful when staffed by talented
conservatives, enthusiastic about research and analysis in the public
policy process.

At the Think Tank Opportunity Workshop, expert
faculty will teach you how think tanks operate from the inside and what
you can do to successfully find and build a career in major research
organizations across Washington D.C. and beyond.

Whether you are
new to your career, hoping to shape public policy, or considering how
you can transition into a think tank, this workshop will help you
succeed.You will learn to:

Friday, June 1, 2018

Here is more from HuffPost, in an article entitled "The Right-Wing Millennial Machine," which says that conservatives are building up an "army of fired-up young people" by offering them salaries:

Nathan’s experience is emblematic of a growing concern on the left: For a movement that wants to reach young people, low-income workers and people of color, progressive organizations and candidates don’t offer many paid opportunities.

“This is why we see attrition in the movement,” said Maggie Thompson, executive director of Generation Progress, the youth arm of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress (which pays its interns, incidentally).

For decades, internships, fellowships and paid travel to conferences have acted like a tractor beam, drawing young people into political movements and holding them long enough to become researchers, strategists and candidates. But the funding to support those kinds of programs hasn’t kept up with the economic realities of the young people who today’s progressives are trying to reach.

New America offers course credits to its interns, which means they may actually be paying to work. (Following the publication of this article, New America contacted HuffPost and said it is rolling out paid internships for its interns in the future.)

About Me

Think Tank Watch is a one-stop-shop for learning and thinking about think tanks. It covers domestic and global think tank news, gossip, personnel, reports, studies, and pretty much anything else related to think tanks. Think Tank Watch can be found cruising the mean streets of "Think Tank Row" and beyond, attending scores of think tank events each year. Since its founding in 2012, Think Tank Watch has become the #1 source of think tank news and gossip in the world. Questions, comments, and tips can be sent to:
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